Automated template-based nuclide identification methods have been under development in recent years. These methods improve accuracy over conventional methods by making better use of spectral information than peak analysis methods. However, these template-based methods are currently limited to identifying the nuclide along with perhaps a very rough estimate of the shielding (e.g., light shielding, heavy shielding, etc.). Internally, the method has solved for some linear combination that could sum to produce the observed spectrum, but this is insufficient to determine the configuration which produced the radiation. To solve for the shielding information, a representation of the physics-based model is constructed (typically one dimensional) and then transported using a radiation transport code. This operation generally requires a human in the loop, since indentifying the correct starting point for optimization is difficult to accomplish with automated methods. Thus, conventional template-based methods cannot be applied to automated instruments as part of the alarming method, nor can they be applied in the field by first responders (e.g., using handheld devices).
Therefore, it would be beneficial to the field of radio-nuclide identification to be able to identify radio-nuclides along with any shielding and activity information that are also capable of avoiding the problems associated with conventional techniques.